carcasses of animals, and the pools of blood soaked up with dry sand.[3] There was an occasional Roman, like Seneca, sane enough to realise the real character of these performances, and brave enough to denounce them as crimes. But by the great mass of all classes of Romans, even by those who pretended to think, they were regarded with perfect moral indifference. The excuse offered by Pliny was generally concurred in by his countrymen, that these bloody shows were necessary for the cultivation of manliness and for keeping awake the strenuous and red-handed instincts in the young. Scarce less revolting than the gladiatorial arena, in its violation of every principle of humanity, was the institution of human slavery. During the later republic and the earlier empire, one-half the population of the Roman state was slaves. The slave population was recruited chiefly, as in Greece, by war and by slave-hunting. Slave-traders and slave-markets flourished both in the capital itself and in all the great ports visited by Roman ships. Some of the outlying provinces of Asia and Africa were almost depopulated by the slave-hunters. Greek slaves were the highest-priced, because the most intelligent. Among the wealthy, who, like the illiterate rich of every age, dawdled their time in ostentation, there were slaves for each different function in the household. There were the _cubicularii_, who acted as housemaids; the _triclinarii_, who waited at table; the _culinarii_, who acted as kitchen drudges; and the _balnearii_, who looked after the baths. Then there were _tonsores_ or barbers; _criniflores_, or hair-crimpers; _calceatores_, who took care of the feet; and _lectores_, whose business it was to read aloud to their masters at meals, in the bath, or in bed. The _ostiarius_, who was sometimes chained in the vestibule like a dog, was the porter; the _invitator_ summoned the guests; and the _servus ab hospitiis_ looked after their lodgment. There was the slave called the _sandalio_, whose sole duty was to care for his master’s sandals; and another, called the _nomenclator_, whose exclusive business it was to accompany his master when he went upon the street, and give him the names of such persons as he ought to recognise. The common punishment for a refractory slave was beating. If the runaway were caught, as he could hardly fail to be, since there were extremely heavy penalties for harbouring or assisting him, he was either branded or had an iron collar like a dog’s welded around his neck, or his legs were fettered, or, in exaggerated or repeated cases of offence, he was at once turned into the arena or otherwise put to death. If he attempted to take personal vengeance upon his master for any wrong whatsoever, his whole family shared his fate, and the regular form of capital punishment for a slave was crucifixion under the most ignominious and agonising circumstances.[4]